PayPal Launches a Brand New Way to Get Paid

PayPal has launched a new way for accountholders to get paid. You don’t have to give people your email address or send them to a page with a shopping cart in order to get paid – now you can create a PayPal.Me link.

“PayPal.Me makes requesting money from groups of friends, family and colleagues suddenly so much easier and faster,” according to the announcement on the PayPal blog. “Rather than following up individually, you can email your PayPal.Me link to co-workers to chip in for an engagement present for another co-worker.”

PayPal users must choose between a personal PayPal.Me link or a business link, since PayPal wants to collect fees from merchants. Those who choose personal payments can only use their PayPal.Me URL to receive personal payments from friends and family, and may not use it to receive payments for goods and services without paying the appropriate fees.

Those who choose purchase payments must agree to only use their PayPal.Me URL to receive payments for goods and services – and those with a PayPal Business Account may only use their PayPal.Me URL to receive Purchase Payments.

“Your friends and customers don’t have to know your email address or mobile phone number, or even have the PayPal app. They just tap on your link, go to your PayPal.Me, type in the amount, and send the money,” the company explains.

PayPal’s new service follows in the footsteps of Square, which launched Cashtags in March. PayPal was also behind Square in launching its card reader called PayPal Here.

PayPal describes the steps to collecting funds through the PayPal.Me URL:

Share your personalized PayPal.Me link in a text, over email, instant messenger, social media post, blog, or on the web.

Recipients click the link on any device no matter what mobile phone, tablet or computer they are using.

Recipients enter the amount, hit send and the money is on the way… that’s it! The money is quickly transferred into your PayPal account.

And, users can also customize the URL to request a specific amount – “just add that number to the end of your link,” PayPal explains. For example, use PayPal.Me/NAME/25 to ask for $25.

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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